Gomorrah: A Book Review

The recent news of the ship Ever Given, which was stuck in the Suez Canal for nearly a week, along with the reports in alternate news media of human trafficking on the ship, reminded me of a book I read several years ago.

Gomorrah caught my eye in the bookstore sometime around 2009 but I did not read it until February 2011. It is a true account of the activities of the Naples mob, called the Camorra, from the late ‘80s to about mid-2006. It is dirty, gritty and at times extremely graphic. In parts the English translation doesn’t read as smoothly as perhaps the original Italian does. There have been both Italian TV and HBO adaptations of the book, which I’ve not seen.

When I read of the reports of human trafficking associated with the Ever Given, I did not discount them. In fact, I gave them serious consideration, for Roberto Saviano opens his narrative at the Port of Naples, describing with gruesome detail as a shipping container is opened and Chinese people, most of them dead, come tumbling out, many falling to the ground as mere mannequins, only to have their bodies spatter as they slam into the concrete below. He goes on to explain the illicit trade connections between China, Naples, the rest of Italy and Europe. A significant amount of the first part of the book deals with the textile and clothing industry.

Nearly the entire second half of the book takes place in the town Casal di Principe, which is on the north side of the Naples metropolitan area, and coincidentally, where my family and I rented a townhouse during my tour of duty there from May 2002 to December 2004. Most of the chapter “Cement” discusses exclusively the activities of the Casale family. There are about four pages worth of text in that chapter on the ‘Scar Face Villa,’ which was just down the street from us and plainly visible from the balcony off my young daughter’s room on the front of our home. The last chapter “Land of Fires,” which is about the illicit waste dumping is particularly disheartening. When we rented the property, we knew that Casal was a Camorra town, but I never truly appreciated or knew how extensive the corruption, vice, and violence was that was literally all around us. I wonder now how “connected” Franco, our landlord, and Marcello, his often sidekick, truly were.

As disconcerting as the book is, I strongly recommend it to anyone wanting to understand the underbelly of evil in the world. Those associated with, or serving in, the U.S. military in Italy are particularly encouraged to read Gomorrah as it will bring a dark and disturbing understanding of your time there.

The book will leave you saddened that such a system as the Camorra exists at all, let alone that it has reaches literally all over the globe. It is a peek into workings of the globalist criminals who are running the show on the planet. Yet, the fact that the author was brave enough to go undercover, write about it, and expose in glaring detail the workings of the mob, gave me pause for hope that perhaps, in time, it will eventually be eliminated.

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Endnote

The review was adapted from an email I sent to friends and colleagues on Sunday, February 27, 2011 after I finished reading the book.

Namaste folks,

😌🙏🏼

Mark Stansell

April 07, 2021